Books

Cancer plot became all too real for author

LONDON — The final novel of Scottish author Iain Banks was released earlier this month to
bittersweet acclaim days after the author died of the disease around which the plot revolves.

The Quarry (Redhook, 336 pages, $26) describes the final weeks in the life of a man in his
40s named Guy who is battling terminal cancer.

The best-selling author, who died on June 9 at age 59, asked publisher Little, Brown to move up
the book’s release date after telling fans about his illness, but he didn’t live to see
publication.

Banks had said — and his widow, Adele, has reiterated — that he didn’t know he had cancer until
the novel was almost finished.

“Had he known he had cancer, he would never have written about it,” Adele Banks said on the
Banksophilia website started by friends of the novelist.

Early reviews said Banks’ instinct for fierce black comedy and biting dialogue remained as sharp
as ever, and
The Guardian called it a poignant novel.

“Reading this book, one is hit again and again with the fact — tragic and astonishing in equal
measure — that Banks didn’t know he was dying until he’d almost finished the first draft,” wrote
Alex Preston in the British newspaper, “that the cancer that was the subject matter of his novel
would soon become the urgent subject matter of his life.”